(Editor’s note: Written in 2018, but doesn’t seem to have lost any relevance!)
Many of my Christian friends are angry. Or afraid. Or both. At least, that’s the way it looks in their posts on social media.
And that’s too bad, for several reasons—
“God’s sovereignty and the wicked acts of men coordinate most shockingly in the death of Jesus. God used ‘the hands of lawless men’ to execute His ‘definite plan’ to offer His precious Son as payment for our sins (Acts 2:23; 4:28).” - Ligonier
I distinctly remember the phone call. It was the spring of 1999, and I had worked up the nerve to telephone my esteemed professor, Dr. John C. Whitcomb—the man whose reputation caused me to choose my theological seminary five years previously.
To my surprise, he picked up the phone, stirring within me a mixture of relief and horror. It just seemed like it wasn’t the right instant to talk with him, however. I learned he was actually on his way to what would be his final international speaking trip, to London.
“I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that I’m the only person in the world who reads through back issues of the Ann Arbor Baptist, a periodical from the late 1800s. But periodicals like that were the blogs of their era and within their pages I find such interesting articles and poems.” - Challies
“What do you think about going to Texas?”
Chris Katulka, director of North American Ministries for The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry, posed that question to me in the summer of 2020.
“To live?” I think that was my response.
Well, he explained, at least initially it would just be for a visit. I was given the task—the test?—of lining up and then executing my own ministry trip to Texas.
Chris shared with me how Texas is, not surprisingly, home to a large base of support for The Friends of Israel. However, we have no one located there as a church ministries representative for FOI.
Many people yearn to make sense of their lives and this world. Why do things happen the way they do? Is it part of a plan? Is there no plan? Using the analogy of a train plodding its way along, there are at least three ways people often think of this world and their place:
“God doesn’t necessarily flaunt Himself in the big, grand events of the day, but He is working, and dare we say hiding, in the mundane and ordinary aspects of our lives.” - Skylar Spradlin
“As Christians we know that God’s sovereign hand draws a line that leads from suffering to meaning, from pain to purpose, from grief to good. There is no affliction that leads nowhere, no sorrow that is ultimately futile, senseless, or pointless.” - Challies
“In his new book, A Simple Guide to Experience Miracles: Instruction and Inspiration for Living Supernaturally in Christ, renowned Christian philosopher J.P. Moreland makes a provocative claim. Ninety-five percent of what the average evangelical church accomplishes in a given year, suggests Moreland, could be explained even if God didn’t exist.” - Breakpoint
“In the introduction, Piper opens the door to see God and his world anew, offering four invitations to study God’s providence. These are invitations to worship and know the God who ‘did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all,’ and to find assurance that through his providence he will ‘graciously give us all things,’ very much including Christ himself (Rom.
